Google Reader Tips

October 25, 2009

I am a huge Google Reader, in fact, I might be one of the most active Google Reader users on the planet. So when they add features, I get a bit giddy. Yesterday, they added two features; an explore section and magic sorting.

The explore section loops in “recommended” sources, which is an old feature, but also adds “popular.” Popular basically shows you what Google deems to be important RSS items on the web but personalized based on my reader and web history. So it shows me items I may have missed that are popular and likely to be on interest to me. I can tell you that most of the items in my popular section were not exactly of interest to me. But if I am ever bored (not likely) I may browse that section in the future. This feature does get better as you “like” and “share” items in Google Reader.

The magic sorting is pretty neat, it basically sorts all your unread items in order of what they think would be most important to you. Like the previous feature, the magic sort gets better as you “like” and “share” items in Google Reader. I can see this feature being useful for many Google Reader users, but for me, I don’t mind going through the feeds in old-school chronological order – being that I have to go through every feed anyway.